Celebrating Love and Life!

L'chaim, y'all! We celebrated 35 years of marriage with an Anniversary Eve dinner on Sunday, February 14th – a most appropriate day for lovers ..... and lovers of fine food. Below is the menu; and what follows is a pictorial description of the process, for the true Foodies in this readership. You must forgive the sloppy pictorial placement; I'm still learning.There were some other good shots I couldn't seem to download here, also. If you would like to se the full photo album, let me know and I'll send you a KodakGallery link.
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Beef Wellington Dinner Soulé (Music: "Die Fledermaus, Act I")

Candlelight Cocktail Hour:
Moet & Chandon Champagne Imperial

Primo:
Steamed Artichoke / Aioli Dipping Sauce
Baguette Slices / Acqua Minerale

Secondo: Beef Wellington (Boeuf en Croute)
with Black Truffle Sauce

Wine: Primitivo Zinfandel '2004, Salamandre Vineyards Santa Cruz
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The artichoke was steamed lightly and chilled the previous day. The aioli sauce was made ahead and chilled also (it is simply a mixture of good mayonnaise, minced garlic, and fresh lemon juice to thin to a smooth consistency).


The Beef Wellington recipe we used was an amalgam of Craig Claiborne, Julia Child, Epicurious.com, Tyler Florence, and Gordon Ramsay.
Here are step-by-step photos of the process:

Searing the meat:





Putting it all together:












A Messy Process:

.... but absolutely delicious and well worth the work.

On Being: Journal Musings At 74

February 5, 2010

Today is the eve of my birthday; I should write something in my blog about what it's like to enter my 75th year of life, eh? All those years of living ought to yield some little nuggets of wisdom, one would think. I'll just do a sort of stream-of-consciousness exercise to see where I stand today.

I believe that Time is irrelevant; it takes as long as it takes to learn something, to accomplish a task, reach a goal, become able to cope with situations as they arise. I've learned that I can be so wrong, for so long, about what I believe to be true, and then see the light at last. I've found that it is possible to do a lot of damage to yourself and others and still find the strength to stop, change, and – most unbelievably – be forgiven and still loved. I have experienced that there must be a force (some call it a Guardian Angel) that protects fools who dance along the precipice – else, what has kept my feet from slipping into the abyss? And if Time really is irrelevant, then I think my experience of temporal universe is a thin veil, a beautiful theatre scrim that will one day be raised: and I can't wait to see the full production.
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February 6, 2010

A wise monk has said that gratefulness is the heart of prayer. In that case, my heart is full of prayer on this day marking my entry into my 75th year of life.

I'm supremely grateful for many gifts:
– I still have my five senses fairly intact
– I treasure the memory of every single year of my life
– I love this earth, and especially the plot of ground that has been given to me late in life, this cottage and small garden in the redwoods
– I'm thankful to all who went before me (my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents – even the ones I've never met, but can see in some of my children)
– I'm especially grateful for the gifts of Faith, Hope, and Love with which I have been blessed.

Yes, I'm grateful for another year of life and love, and for every day that may be left to me to glory in Being. As the good Rabbi Heschel hath said: Just to be is blessing; just to live is holy.

apres moi, le deluge

It never stops: we have another storm coming in this afternoon, stronger ones tomorrow and through Wednesday. All's well up here, though: and I'm getting a lot of writing time in!

Storm Track

Now the storms have settled into a calmer pattern; NWS says rain, rain, rain, right through to next week, but with a sort of break on the weekend. Our cottage is still intact, watertight, and warm; so far no more electrical outages. I have no idea how the roads beyond or above Boulder Creek may be faring, but we're not going to fare forth on them until Saturday afternoon – when we'll try to get down to Capitola to take Julie out for a belated birthday luncheon, and to stock up on Trader Joe's supplies before next week's storms move in.

I guess the El Nino predictions were on target, eh?

Just to update you on the denouement of the tree-toppling: after the electricity came back on in our park at 7 PM on Tuesday evening, John went down on Wednesday morning and retrieved the car and it's safely parked in the driveway now. I drove to the Post Office yesterday afternoon to mail off birthday cards and packages, and got caught in a sudden short thundershower with light hail -- but I was almost home as it hit, so no problem – grabbed the mail from our box at the foot of the hill and crawled the car back up to our driveway. Feeling I deserved a treat at that point, I pulled out a last slice of Trappist fruitcake from the box in the fridge, made some Gingerbread Spice tea, and shared teatime with John.

We had homemade chicken-vegetable soup last evening for dinner and went to bed before 10 PM because we never know when another electrical storm will interrupt our sleep. However, it was beautifully quiet all night, with light showers lulling us to slumber.

I've gotten a lot of writing and reading done this week, a great benefit of being housebound. We are so blessed to have this safe haven; rain and all, we just love being here.

And They Are So Right

Flood Advisory
Hazardous Weather Outlook
High Wind Warning

Today...Very windy. Rain...locally heavy at times...and isolated thunderstorms. Some thunderstorms may produce gusty winds and small hail. Highs in the mid 40s to lower 50s. Southeast winds 30 to 45 mph...becoming south 20 to 30 mph with gusts to around 40 mph in the afternoon.
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We may lose power again ... lights flickering a bit already, and winds rising ... so sending out this bulletin while I can. More later when possible. We're warm and dry, but not goin' nowhere!

El Nino Viene

It's raining gatos y perros! At long last the National Weather Service, so often a plaything of fate, has been right on target for California.

Our Monday (yesterday) was spent in tightening up our rough-weather plans: John tied down the carport/awning against the blown-umbrella effect of high winds; I inventoried our well-laid-in food supplies and noted a few little missing items. Around 11 AM, the man of the house drove down through light rains beginning, to pick up the necessaries in the village.

While he was out, the power followed suit: it went out, at around noon. After John had parked a half-mile down from our cottage and hiked up the rest of the way with the groceries, he regaled me with the reason for the sudden silence in our house. A lightly rooted oak tree had tumbled down across power lines and blocked Big Basin Way, the main route to our place from the village.

Fine; we change our day's plans. Now it's hot tea and reading in the big back room, where those lovely windows let in all the daylight there is available. Wrapped in lap-robes and warm with the coverage and the tea, we plowed through our well-selected pile of books chosen for this eventuality. Could be worse, eh?

As the light faded, our brave John donned slicker and boots and went down to the Bracken Brae entrance to see what could be seen: a lot of disgruntled workers standing around in the rain, waiting for a P G & E crane truck to lift the tree off of the wires. These poor peons were ready to do their work of cutting up and removing the big tree, and P G & E linemen were ready to restore our power. But meanwhile, they awaited and awaited the arrival of the crane.

Other local denizens were out prowling around too, and camaraderie abounded – but not light. So John came back up to the cottage, built a warming fire in the woodstove, and gratefully accepted a drink. I lit candles and set up the kitchen for a stovetop dinner, with camping lanterns and matches for lighting the propane stove.

Rain continued; and the power came on at 7 PM. We had dinner and went to bed; rain continued..... but not the predicted high winds (yet).

At 5 AM today, we were awakened by a powerful and spectacular thunderstorm; the reverberating booms echoed down our valley, reminding us of a similar great storm we once watched engulf the Stubai valley in Austria – as we discovered where Wagner got his musical ideas.

So now we are into Day 2 of the week of storms. If the NWS continues lucky, we are due for two or three more powerful storms, day by day, throughout the week. Whenever we have power up here I will try to update this blog, so stay tuned if you can.

Christmas At The Country Club, Again

There's a very funny song that a local band, The Trailer Park Troubadours, has recorded, called "It's Christmas At The Trailer Park Again" -- and we've had a good few of those, in the past! But now, with our second winter holiday season in the cottage coming to a close, we are cozy and happy, and not a bit sick, as we were last year at this time.

Our sincere little Douglas fir and its accompanying Advent Wreath with the Christ Candle (see above, taken Christmas Eve) were our main decorations in the parlor; and we needed no outside lights this year, thanks to the major lighting wars our two sets of neighboring houses were carrying on! (Peter's efforts you can see above; Ted & Teresa's display was so huge and covered so much territory in their front garden and on the house that we couldn't capture the whole light-show with our camera.) Suffice to say that NASA probably used our little block as a guide marker for the satellites.

But our front door was adorned with a lovely, fruit-decorated fresh evergreen wreath that Julie bought for us; and candles were lit in the parlor and the little kitchen. We had a festival of lights of our own sort.

Christmas Eve revels brought Julie, Bryan, DannyD and Stef – accompanied by her Highly Touted Jaque – to our door, for a leisurely afternoon of buffet-lunching on black bean soup and tomato-basil bisque, breads and cheeses, and a fabulous pumpkin cheesecake that Julie baked and brought along. Jaque won points in our book by bringing a big basket of meats and sausages for our freezer, a gift from his parents who own the best gourmet butcher shop in this area, the Corralitos Market near Watsonville.

We spent that evening by ourselves, with fire and candles all lit, listening to our CD of Christmas Eve vespers, "A Ceremony of Nine Lessons and Carols," from King's College/Cambridge. (We were too stuffed from the late lunch to eat any dinner!)

On Christmas Day in the morning we drove down to our church in Scotts Valley for Mass; and then we spent a quiet afternoon opening gifts traversed from afar, with a bit of tea and Dresdener Stollen (gift from Leenie) – and had a delicious baked ham dinner and music from our Munich Choir's great "Messiah" recordings.

The time has been quiet since then; we went to an afternoon movie with Julie yesterday ("It's Complicated") and will also have a peaceful and quiet New Year's weekend coming. Two old student friends of mine from UCSB days are driving up from San Jose tomorrow for a visit, but will leave before New Years' Eve skies darken. In the evening we'll share some simple hors d'oeuvres and champagne "a deux" – with our recording of "Die Fledermaus" – and go to bed when it's midnight (in the Rockies, most likely!)

I hope all have had as lovely a holiday season; if you care to share your experiences in the Comments segment below, we'd love to hear about it.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good 2010! Much joy coming with our Reunion in midsummer, the highlight of our hopes for the next 365 days.